Janice Meredith eBook

The girl faced about. “You men are all
alike,” she cried, interrupting. “You
tease and worry and torture a girl you pretend to
care for, till ’t is past endurance. I hate
you, and before I’ll—­”

“Now, Miss Janice, say you’ll not run
off with him. I’ll —­I’ll
try ter do as you ask, if only you—­”

“So long as you—­as you don’t—­don’t
bother me, I won’t,” promised Janice;
“but the instant—­”

And leaving the sentence thus broken, the girl left
Philemon, and fled to her room.

XVII
IN THE NAME OF LIBERTY

The scheme devised by Janice to keep Philemon at
arm’s length would hardly have succeeded for
long, had not the squire been so preoccupied with
the election and with the now active farm work that
he paid little heed to the course of true love.
Poor Phil was teased by him now and again for his
“offishness;” but Janice carefully managed
that their interviews were not held in the presence
of her parents, and so the elders did not come to
a realising sense of the condition, but really believed
that the courtship was advancing with due progress
to the port of matrimony.

Though this was a respite to Janice, she herself knew
that it was at best the most temporary of expedients,
and that the immediate press of affairs once over,
her marriage with Philemon was sure to be pushed to
a conclusion. Already her mother’s discussions
of clothes, of linen, and of furniture were constant
reminders of its imminence, and the mere fact that
the servants of Greenwood and the neighbourhood accepted
the matter as settled, made allusions to it too frequent
for Janice not to feel that her bondage was inevitable.
A dozen times a day the girl would catch her breath
or pale or flush over the prospect before her, frightened,
as the bird in the net, not so much by the present
situation, as by what the future was certain to bring
to pass.

A still more serious matter was further to engross
her parents’ thoughts. One evening late
in April, as the squire sat on the front porch resting
from his day’s labour, Charles, who had been
sent to the village on some errand, came cantering
up the road, and drew rein opposite.

[Illustration: “The prisoner is gone!”]

“Have better care how ye ride that filly, sir,”
said the squire, sharply. “I’ll not
have her wind broke by hard riding.”

“I know enough of horses to do her no harm,”
answered the man, dismounting easily and gracefully;
“and if I rode a bit quick, ’t is because
I’ve news that needs wings.”

“What’s to do?” demanded the master,
laying down the “Rivington’s Royal Gazette”
he had been reading.

“As I was buying the nails,” replied the
servant, speaking with obvious excitement, “Mr.
Bissel rode up to the tavern with a letter from the
Massachusetts Committee of Safety to the southward;
and as ’t was of some moment, while he baited,
I took a copy of it.” The groom held out
a paper, his hand shaking a little in his excitement,
and with an eager look on his face he watched the
squire read the following:—­